Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
That which is high - the old are afraid of ascending a hill.
Fears ... in the way - even on the level highway they are full of fears of falling, etc.
Almond ... flourish. In the East the hair is mostly dark. The white head of the old among the dark-haired is like an almond tree, with its white blossoms, among the dark trees around (Holden). But the flower of the almond is pink, not white. Maurer therefore explains it: The almond tree flowers on a leafless stock in winter (answering to old age, in which all the powers are dormant) while the other trees are flowerless. Gesenius takes the Hebrew (yaneetz) for flourishes from a different root: 'The (toothless old man) loathes (through want of appetite) even (the sweet) almond.' But the verb is used of the budding or blossoming pomegranate in Song of Solomon 6:11, The Hebrew for "almond" х shaaqeed (H8247)] is from a root ( shaaqad (H8245)) to be wakeful, because it is the first that wakes up from the sleep of winter. So it is the symbol of wakefulness in Jeremiah 1:11-12. Pliny ('Hist. Nat.' 16: 25) says, 'The almond is the first of all to blossom, in the mouth of January.' Thus the sense is, 'the wakefulness of old age sets in.'
Grasshopper. The dry, shriveled, old man, his backbone sticking out, his knees projecting forwards, his arms backwards, his head down, and the apophyses enlarged, is like that insect. Hence, arose the fable that Tithonus, in very old age, was changed into a grasshopper (Parkhurst, after Smith and Bochart, in 'Poli Synopsis'). 'The locust laboriously raises itself to fly:' the old man about to leave the body is like a locust when it is assuming its winged form, and is about to fly (Maurer). The locust is a symbol of the forces hostile to life, which consume it in old age (Hengstenberg). I prefer the first view. Mercer's is, 'even the weight of a grasshopper is a burden to the old.' But the general scope is allegorical; and as the "almond tree" was used symbolically, so is the grasshopper here.
A burden - namely, to himself.
Desire shall fail - satisfaction shall be abolished. For desire the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and Septuagint have 'the caper tree,' provocative of appetite and also of lust; Hebrew, 'abiyownaah (H35).
Man goeth to his long home - whence "he shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place (in this present life) know him anymore" (Job 7:10). The symptoms before described are the forerunners of this last solemn event.
Mourners go about (i:e., will soon go about) the streets (Amos 5:16) - hired for the occasion (Matthew 9:23).